Peter Wells in New York
The United States on Tuesday reported more than 4,000 deaths from coronavirus in a single day for the second time and since the death toll in the country’s two most populous states has exceeded 30,000.
State officials attributed an additional 4,056 deaths to the coronavirus, a daily count that is second only to 4,081 deaths reported on January 7, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project.
Last week, 23,119 deaths in the US were attributed to the coronavirus, a record for a seven-day period and averaging about 3,303 per day.
The total death toll in the US is more than 371,000, more than in any other country.
On Tuesday, the California and Texas health departments, which occupy the first and second place among the US states in population, revealed that the death toll exceeded 30,000, rising to 30,513 and 30,219, respectively.
Only New York, with 32,007 deaths – most of which occurred during the initial stage of the pandemic – has more.
Chris McLaurin, a pharmacist at Walgreens, applies the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Jackson, Mississippi to Lakandra McNealy, a home worker for the elderly
Arizona (335), Alabama (226), Mississippi (98) and Wyoming (33) reported record increases in deaths in one day.
The number of people currently in U.S. hospitals with coronavirus has surpassed 130,000 for the first time in three days, to 131,326.
On January 7, a record 132,464 people were hospitalized.
Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia and the home state of President-elect Joe Biden, Delaware, reported record hospitalizations, as did Texas, which crossed the 14,000 threshold for the first time.
States reported an additional 213,885 infections in the past 24 hours, according to CTP data, of 193,857 on Monday and compared with an average in the previous week of 244,519 cases per day.